Center for Law and Social Policy

06/10/2026

Immigration policy is not abstract. It shapes whether children feel safe at school, whether families seek health care, whether caregivers can show up for work, and whether communities can thrive. On the Defense of Democracy podcast, CLASP’s Suma Setty and Kaelin Rapport joined for a conversation on immigration policy, family separation, enforcement practices, and the real-world impact on children, caregivers, and communities.

Drawing from CLASP’s research with immigrant families, child care providers, health care workers, and community organizations, Suma and Kaelin bring critical clarity to a complex issue: fear and uncertainty are forcing families to make impossible choices, often with lasting consequences for children’s mental health, development, and well-being.

Immigration policy is children’s policy, family policy, health policy, and economic policy. Listen to learn more about:
- How enforcement practices are affecting children and families
- How fear limits access to schools, health care, child care, and public spaces
- Why obtaining legal status is far more complicated than many people realize.
- What policy choices could better protect children, families, and communities.

In this episode of the Defense of Democracy podcast, host Addison K...

05/24/2026

Lulit Shewan's recent CLASP blog, Centering Black Women in the Fight for Safe Jobs, is a clarifying read for labor advocates, worker safety researchers, and racial equity professionals. The piece argues that for Black women, workplace safety has always had to be demanded, defended, and organized for, not assumed. A useful framing for anyone building labor standards enforcement or organizing strategies. Read:

For Black women, safety has never been guaranteed. It has had to be demanded, defended, and organized for.

05/21/2026

Parker Gilkesson Davis's recent CLASP blog, Ensuring Everyone Eats: Why We're Expanding How We Think About Food Assistance, offers food policy advocates and anti-hunger professionals a broader framework for thinking about food security. The piece draws on ancestral and community wisdom to argue that ensuring everyone eats is urgent, possible, and something our ancestors already showed us how to do. A useful complement to CLASP's broader food sovereignty work. Read:

Ensuring that everyone eats feels urgent, but it also feels possible. Our ancestors showed us how. They fed one another through conditions far worse than this. They survived because they had each other.

05/18/2026

Diane Harris's recent CLASP blog, Conflating Equity and Equality Harms the Growth of Registered Apprenticeships, is a useful read for workforce development professionals, labor policy advocates, and equity researchers. The piece explains how funding cuts, layoffs, and anti-equity rollbacks are restricting access and growth in registered apprenticeship programs, and why conflating equity and equality undermines worker opportunity. Read the full piece:

Apprenticeship goals are undermined by funding cuts, layoffs, and anti-equity rollbacks that restrict access, growth, and worker opportunity.

05/16/2026

What if we stopped trying to fix broken systems and started imagining better ones? A CLASP brief invites us to dream about what child well-being could look like if it were designed for Black children to thrive from the start, not survive through a system that was never built for them. It is bold, hopeful, and worth reading:

Afrofuturism & Systems Change: Reclaiming Mental Models for Child Well-Being offers a powerful framework for advancing justice by transforming the mental models that shape systems, policies, and narratives. Led by CLASP alum Alycia Hardy at the National Black Child Development Institute (NBCDI), the...

05/15/2026

Elyse Shaw's recent CLASP blog, The Fight for Trans Rights is the Fight for Everyone's Rights, makes the connective-tissue argument that civil rights advocates know well: attacks on trans people also undermine women's rights, public life, and broader civil rights protections. For coalition-builders and policy researchers working across gender equity, LGBTQ+ rights, and civil liberties, the post is a useful framing for intersectional advocacy. Read:

Anti-trans policies harm transgender people, undermine women’s rights, restrict public life and work, and threaten broader civil rights for everyone.

05/13/2026

This year marks 250 years since the United States was founded and 100 years of Black History Month. A recent CLASP brief asks what the word great really means in this country, and for whom. It makes the case that true progress requires facing the past honestly and repairing the harm. It is a serious, thoughtful read, and it matters. Read the brief:

2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the United States, and this February brings the 100th anniversary of Black History Month. The Association for the Study of African American Life and History, which founded Black History Month, calls us to celebrate Black history across the African Diaspora and how...

05/12/2026

A recent CLASP blog by Ashley Blair, a member of CLASP's Community Partnership Group, brings lived-experience expertise to the conversation on family economic security. The post describes how raising children brings joy alongside financial strain, career sacrifice, and the urgent need for stronger public policy supports. For advocates working on participatory research models, the CPG continues to be a strong example of centering lived experience in policy conversations. Read:

Ashley Blair, member of CLASP's Community Partnership Group, describes how raising children brings joy, but also financial strain, career sacrifice, and urgent need for stronger public policy supports.

05/10/2026

When federal food programs are under attack, families do not stop needing to eat. A recent CLASP brief takes us to Peoria, Illinois to show how Black, Indigenous, and immigrant communities have been feeding themselves for generations despite disinvestment and policy barriers. Local communities are powerful, but they need policymakers to show up too. Read the brief and share it:

By Teon Hayes and Parker Gilkesson Davis Threats to SNAP other food assistance programs reveal the urgent need for a broader food sovereignty approach to solving hunger. The authors promote community power, focus on local food systems, and sustained targeted investment. The brief highlights how Blac...

05/10/2026

The people who educate, nurture, and care for our children deserve better.

Better pay. Better support. Better policies.

Stand with child care workers on May 11, 2026, and demand universal child care and thriving wages for providers.

We’re growing an undeniable movement — and every politician needs to know: the next few years will determine who got on board with progress and who stood in the way of making life easier for families.
Day Without Child Care — register now 👇
https://brnw.ch/21x2mpg or go to our link in bio